PIERCE
LAND
CLEARING
We have already built ponds in Liberty Hill, photographed start to finish, including a fifth acre build that took exactly two days. This is the town where our pond work is easiest to check: drive past it.
Oak country on the edge of the Hill Country: decomposed granite, sandy loam, and clay pockets, sometimes all three on one tract.
A lot of Liberty Hill ground is decomposed granite and sandy loam, beautiful to build a house on, tricky to hold water in. Sandy basins drink the pond as fast as it fills unless the build finds clay or brings it.
That is not a reason to skip the pond. It is a reason to build it with someone who tests before digging.
Our documented Liberty Hill builds worked because the design chased the clay: siting the basin where the soil held, coring the dam into solid material, and compacting in lifts. Where a tract has no clay to chase, bentonite worked into the basin or a liner does the job, priced up front.
Two local builds on this page prove the method on this exact ground.
Granite country builds run a little different. Here is the whole process on a Liberty Hill pond, first call to full pool.
It starts with photos of the site and a rough idea of size. We answer with a same-day ballpark off the published price list, and if the number works for you, we schedule the site walk. No sales funnel, just a conversation.
Liberty Hill sits where the blackland gives way to granite, so the site walk here is soil detective work. We read the draw for granite sand veins that drink water, look at how much real clay the site owns, and follow the slope the runoff already uses. You will hear the honest version on the spot: whether the ground seals itself, whether we borrow clay from elsewhere on the property, or whether this particular draw wants a bentonite plan priced in from day one.
The quote reads like a plan, not a mystery: dig, dam, spillway, and any contingency for rock, each priced in machine days. If clearing is needed first, it is on the same sheet at our published day rates. What is written is what you pay.
Within a few weeks of signing, the lowboy delivers the iron. All we need from you is gate access wide enough for the machines and somewhere to drop the trailer. Everything else is on us.
Most ponds take two to five working days. The sequence never changes: strip and save the topsoil, cut the core trench, raise the dam in thin compacted lifts, shape the basin. Watch as much of it as you like from outside the swing radius.
The build ends with a walkthrough, not an invoice. Dam, spillway, slopes, and dressed banks, checked against the quote with you standing there. Anything off gets fixed before the lowboy is loaded.
Thin-soiled granite country sheds rain fast, which is the one favor it does pond builders. A Liberty Hill pond with a healthy watershed catches runoff from the first serious storm, and the South Fork drainages remind you how quickly this ground moves water. Grass the dam early, watch the spillway work its first storms, and give the pond a storm season to find full pool.
Published, not hidden behind a form. Prices and build times are based on 6 feet of depth at center with a 4:1 bank.
| Pond Size | Starting Price at 6 ft depth, 4:1 bank | Build Time |
|---|---|---|
| 1/4 acre | from $12,300 | 2 to 3 days |
| 1/2 acre | from $19,200 | 3 to 4 days |
| 3/4 acre | from $23,300 | 4 to 5 days |
| 1 acre | from $27,000 | 5 to 6 days |
| 1 1/4 acre | from $30,400 | 6 to 7 days |
| 1 1/2 acre | from $33,800 | 7 to 8 days |
| 1 3/4 acre | from $36,800 | 8 to 9 days |
| 2 acre | from $39,500 | 9 to 10 days |
Liberty Hill builds run the published list when the clay cooperates. Sandy tracts may add bentonite or liner material, quoted as a line item after we test the basin soil, never sprung afterward.
Size it, tell us what to do with the dirt, then draw the pond right on a photo of your land. Your estimate comes back by email, along with a preview of the finished water.
Every quote we write splits the same honest way. Here is what is inside the number and what gets flagged separately.
Every quote covers the complete pond: watershed-matched siting, staking, saved topsoil, a true core trench, a dam raised in compacted lifts, a shaped spillway, mowable slope finishes, and banks dressed with the topsoil we saved. Transport of the machines is included, as is the final walkthrough.
Rock hammer time when the dig finds granite too solid to rip, billed by the day and flagged up front. Clay borrow or bentonite when a sand vein shows up in the basin, priced before work starts, never discovered on the invoice. Cedar clearing at published day rates when the site starts brushed up, and spoil hauls only in the rare case the dirt cannot stay on the property.
Real ponds, real day counts, photographed on site.
Fifth acre, Liberty Hill: 2 days
Shaping the basin, Liberty Hill
Banks graded to mow, Liberty Hill
Finished and full, Liberty Hill
Burnet, 25 min northwest: 4 daysFull process, statewide services, and the build standard: our Texas pond construction page.
Both documented Liberty Hill builds moved fast, and that is typical for this ground: decomposed granite digs easily, machines stay productive, and a fifth to quarter acre pond is a two day job when the design is right. The speed is not rushing, it is soil that cooperates with an excavator.
The full pond at the top of this page is the answer to the only question that counts in sandy country: did it hold? It did, because the basin found the clay and the dam got compacted in lifts instead of pushed up loose. Ask any pond builder working Liberty Hill for their equivalent photo.
Liberty Hill is doubling, and the new tracts north and west carry the same soils. If you are closing on acreage out here, walk it with us before you finalize the site plan: the difference between the pond spot that works and the one that does not is often a hundred feet, and it is free to find out.
The same thin soils that make Liberty Hill tricky to seal make it quick to fill. Rain does not soak in here, it runs, and a pond set in the right draw catches a storm almost as fast as the sky can deliver one. We size the basin to that runoff so the pond stays honest year round instead of riding full for a month and empty for six.
Granite sand does not hold water, and no amount of hoping changes that. What works is finding the clay the property does have and putting it where it counts: pushed into the basin floor, packed into the core trench, keyed into the dam. When the site cannot supply its own seal we say so on the walk and price bentonite treatment up front, because a pond that leaks is not a pond, it is a hole with a story.
Summer evaporation takes feet, not inches, off ponds out here. The defense is depth: eight feet or better at center keeps cool water under the fish, keeps stock water late into a dry August, and shades out the weeds that own warm shallows. Shallow and wide photographs well in the spring and disappoints by July.
Grass the dam first, before anything with fins. Once the pond has held water a few months, minnows and bluegill establish the food chain, and bass go in a season later to find a pantry already stocked. Skip the order and the bass strip the pond in a summer, and no amount of restocking fixes an empty food chain quickly.
Most Liberty Hill pond sites start life covered in cedar. We are a Liberty Hill clearing crew before we are pond builders, so the brush comes out mulched or grubbed clean, the oaks you are keeping stay unwounded, and the haul paths get routed around root zones instead of through them. The site we leave is graded, dressed, and ready to grass.
A pond is dirt work first, but it does not have to end there. One call covers everything from grass on the dam to fish in the water.
Decomposed granite and thin topsoil rill the moment they sit bare on a slope, so seeding and erosion matting go on the dam the same week the machines finish. Grass roots are what knit a new Liberty Hill dam together before the first real storm tests it.
August out here is hard on still water. A bottom diffuser keeps oxygen moving so fish stay healthy and algae stays hungry, and a fountain adds the kind of motion you can see from the porch. We plan the power run during the build so the install is simple.
Plan the dock while the basin is dry and the machines are on site. We will cut the grade for a fixed pier or set the shoreline for a floating dock as part of the dig, which beats retrofitting one onto finished banks every single time.
Stocking runs forage first: fatheads and bluegill to build the food chain, bass a season later. Done in order, a Liberty Hill pond turns into a private fishery that holds its own against a lake trip, minus the boat ramp line at Sandy Creek.
We had a great experience with Pierce Land Clearing. Customer service was great and the heavy equipment operator was awesome. He was easy to work with and accommodated our requests. Pierce Land Clearing had the best prices and worked with your schedule. They are the best in the area. Highly recommend!
Liz Sanchez, Google review
Preston, Dustin, and Steven just wrapped up an amazing job on an 800-acre commercial property. They were professional, dependable, hardworking, and transparent. I would highly recommend their services to anyone.
Nick Rodriguez, Google review
Pierce Land Clearing is a great family-owned and run business. They are very professional and provide timely, reasonable quotes. We have about 5.5 acres. In 2 days, they cleared most cedar, standing dead trees and mulched all at once with their large forestry machine. They also brought their rock crusher which actually pulverizes rocks. Amazing job!
Maggie Oehlke, Google review
The site walk comes with vocabulary. Here is what the crew means when they say it.
Every acre of ground that sheds rain toward your pond. It, not the hole, decides how fast you get water.
The water level at the bottom of the spillway, the highest the pond is designed to hold day to day.
Where the dam dirt comes from. On a well designed pond it is the basin itself, so every yard dug does double duty.
One acre of water a foot deep, about 326,000 gallons. The unit that decides whether a stock pond needs a state permit.
Saving the living top layer before the dig and dressing it back over the banks after, so grass takes the first season.
Clay you can roll into a ribbon in your hand. In Liberty Hill granite country it is the scarcest material on site, which is why we bank every yard of it we find.
The towns around Liberty Hill, and the crews that already work them.
Yes, and they are on this page: a fifth acre build finished in two days, photographed through basin shaping, bank grading, and full of water. Not stock photos, this ground.
Not by accident. Decomposed granite drinks water, so the build has to find the clay, core the dam properly, and sometimes bring bentonite. Done that way, the finished pond photo above is the result.
The published list applies: quarter acre from $12,300 at 6 foot depth on a 4:1 bank. Sandy tracts can add seal material as a flagged line item. The calculator above runs your exact size and depth.
Our documented fifth acre Liberty Hill build ran two days on site. Most quarter to half acre ponds run 2 to 5 days, weather permitting, and we give the day count with the quote.
Acreage and ag ponds almost never. The South Fork San Gabriel drainage can carry floodplain lines, and we check the maps for your tract during the site walk.
Every week we do. Same mobilization: cedar out, roots grubbed, pond dug, dam built. One crew, one bill.
Send photos of the spot and a rough size. We will tell you where the clay is likely hiding, and you can drive past our finished work in the meantime.